In a post published yesterday, Twitter have announced that there will be a serious crackdown on multiple accounts using the micro-blogging site to artificially inflate the importance of certain tweets.

It's common knowledge that the site has become the breeding ground for bots or 'computational propaganda', as coined by the University of Oxford's internet watchdog division, since the 2016 US Presidential Elections and the Brexit debate. As the war over public opinion is being fought increasingly online these agents have been trying to steer debates on controversial and divisive topics internationally.

The news comes after a fresh bout of concerns were raised after the Florida shooting hashtags were inundated with Russian botnets, attempting to lead the conversation on the highly contentious issue of gun control.

A spokesperson for Twitter has confirmed the new rules regarding the use of multiple accounts and they are as follows

Do not (and do not allow your users to) simultaneously post identical or substantially similar content to multiple accounts.

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This applies regardless of whether the Tweets are published to Twitter at the same time, or are scheduled/queued for future publication.

Do not (and do not allow your users to) simultaneously perform actions such as Likes, Retweets, or follows from multiple accounts.

On top of this, it will be forbidden to co-ordinate an intentional manipulation of the trending section on Twitter. The site will remove these options from its own TweetDeck app, and third-party developers have until March 23rd to comply.

The crackdown has been met with mixed reactions. Conservatives in America feel that Twitter is discriminating against them for holding certain political beliefs.

I lost over 200 followers last night after twitter forced me to give a phone number and prove I was not a “bot”.

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While others have welcomed the news.

Apparently conservatives on Twitter feel singled out because so many of their followers are suspected Russian bots. This is what happens when you share the same goals as the Russian trolls. #TwitterLockOuthttps://t.co/bBliPvKb7p